Saltwater Fishing

This is the best time of the year for exciting top-water action from the surf, inlet or boat while casting walking topwater lures!

Learn how a veteran Mobile Bay saltwater fishing guide reads clues to locate and catch more fish.

“People think I’m joking when I say I smell the redfish,” Capt. Patric Garmeson of Ugly Fishing said with a smile as he leaned back against the bull redfish on the end of his line.

Moments earlier, the veteran charter caption had announced “smelling them” and turned his head to look upwind. Something obviously looked good because he immediately turned the boat with his trolling motor, moved in the direction he had looked and made long cast with a swimbait. The hook-up was almost immediate!

Garmeson doesn’t literally smell redfish. However, he can smell clues that predator fish are feeding, so when Garmeson catches a whiff of that scent, he knows to seek its source.

There’s nothing like the thrill of working your favorite beach or jetty with a swimming plug!  Learn how surfcasting can produce great fall fishing action.

Surfcasting artificial baits along your favorite stretch of beach for puts you close to the action! Part of the joy is feeling the waves churn and surge as you cast just beyond the breakers or feeling the refreshing spray as you walk carefully out a jetty. More importantly, surfcasting provides an extremely effective way to catch striped bass, bluefish and other gamefish, especially during fall, when baitfish and gamefish push close to beaches.

Popping corks serve several important functions for inshore fishing and can be used with artificial lures or natural bait. Learn to get the most out of these highly useful tools.

Few occurrences capture fishing fun quite like a float darting out of sight when a fish grabs a bait. The same thing is true whether you’re talking about a balsa pencil float disappearing when bluegill grabs a cricket or when a large saltwater popping cork gets yanked under by a redfish plowing a soft-plastic minnow.

In that sense, a popping cork, like a Bomber Paradise Popper X-Treme, is really just a big bobber. Used properly, though, a popping cork does far more than let you know when redfish or speckled trout takes your bait. It helps deliver offerings to the best areas, suspends them in the strike zone, calls fish from afar and urges the gamefish into feeding mode.

We’ll examine the situations that lend themselves well to using a popping cork and then dig into how and how to rig popping corks and fish them effectively.

Want to catch more fish on topwater lures? Check out these saltwater fishing tips from a top coastal guide.

Few things in fishing create more excitement than a big saltwater predator fish coming from nowhere to devour a topwater lure. Thankfully, beyond maximizing the thrill of every strike, properly used topwater lures produce some of the best saltwater fishing action for inshore species like redfish and spotted seatrout (speckled trout).

Capt. Patric Garmeson of Ugly Fishing Charters in coastal Alabama makes regular use of saltwater topwater lures to deliver exciting fishing action for his clients. We spoke with Garmison, who guides year-round in and around Mobile Bay, about his topwater approach and about the lures he uses to call up the best surface action.

Follow these saltwater fishing tips to tap into fast and exciting fishing action in your area.

Weakfish have been far more plentiful in New Jersey bays this year than has been the case for several years. Let’s look at the best weakfish lures and strategies for catching these popular gamefish.

One speckled saltwater jewel captures the hearts of New Jersey anglers during the summer – weakfish. Remember them? Seems like it’s been way too long that we’ve said the word weakfish much in fishing reports around New Jersey or had reason to discuss how to catch weakfish. Reasons for their lack of presence in recent years has been hotly debated with varying theories, though none scientifically proven.

In the late 1990s I recall heading out for a morning in Barnegat Bay and having no problem tangling with a half dozen 5- to 10-pound tide-runners before sunup on soft baits, then grass shrimping hundreds of weakfish in the 2-to-4-pound range all day long. The mid- to late 2000s saw a marked decline in the fishery. Some springs since, they’ve sort of shown up, with a dozen here and there. Other years, you wouldn’t hear of one being caught.

So far in 2022, a wild rebound has been happening in the backwaters and surf from one tip of the state to the other, with fish from 2 to 12 pounds seemingly haunting the backwaters in solid numbers. So, let’s look at how to catch weakfish and where to find them.

Large bays hold major concentrations of feeding striped bass during late spring. Learn about the best lures and tactics for spring striper fishing.

No other fish in the Northeast sparks a saltwater angler’s interest during springtime like the striped bass. Every year, from late March through June, striped bass schools migrate northward along the Eastern Seaboard to follow their innate call for the ritual of spawning. Three main spawning grounds are defined: the Chesapeake Bay, Delaware River and Hudson River. All three areas have one factor in common: The stripers must move through large expanses of big estuarial bays.

In New Jersey, Raritan Bay is the gateway to the Hudson River, and the expanse presents world-class opportunities for spring striper fishing. Here’s a look at the top striped bass fishing lures and tactics for successful spring striper fishing.

Unsure what lures to tie on to find fishing success? These hand-picked fishing tackle kits simplify the answer.

Do you like easy?

Do you like catching fish?

How about combining these two?

That is what Lurenet offers with numerous fishing tackle kits, which range from a few carefully matched baits to large sets, and which collectively provide something for pretty much any fishing situation. Fishing tackle kits commonly combine baits that compliment each other, provide all the tackle needed for a technique, or provide multiple sizes and/or colors of a highly effective bait.

Selecting saltwater lures that allow you to effectively work the best part of the water column can help you catch more fish.

“Take it from the top.”

That phrase typically suggests going back to the beginning of a scene or song in some sort of rehearsal, but it’s also a good strategy for choosing saltwater lures for finding redfish or trout and tapping into the day’s finest action. Surface lures can be highly effective for prompting bites and serve up extra fun fishing. So, starting on top simply makes sense.

That said, some days fish will mostly near the bottom or somewhere between the top and bottom, so it’s valuable to have a “top to bottom” selection of saltwater lures and test offerings that work all parts of the water column, allowing the fish to reveal their daily preferences.